Ams Climate Change Audio - Environmental Science Seminar Series (esss)

Informações:

Sinopse

An audio feed of Capitol Hill presentations by experts in the field of climate change, hosted by the American Meteorological Society's Environmental Policy Program.This podcast should be updated within 24 hours of the live presentations.Producer: Larry Gillick, Assistant Professor, Digital and Broadcast Media, Shenandoah University

Episódios

  • Assessing Greenhouse Gas Emissions Reduction Policies: New Science Tools in the Service of Policy and Negotiations

    17/04/2009 Duração: 01h34min

    New Tools for Assessing GHG Reduction Policies As negotiations towards a post-Kyoto agreement on Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions intensify, there is a pressing need for flexible, user-friendly analytical tools to quickly yet reliably assess the impacts of the rapidly evolving policy proposals for emissions of greenhouse gases and their impact on the global climate. Such tools would enable negotiators, policymakers and other stakeholders, including the general public, to understand the relationships among proposals for emissions reductions, concentrations of GHGs in the atmosphere, and the resulting changes in climate. The new Climate-Rapid Overview And Decision Support Simulator (C-ROADS) developed by MIT, the Sustainability Institute, and Ventana Systems, in partnership with the Heinz Center, is just such a tool. C-ROADS is a user-friendly, interactive computer model of the climate system consistent with the best available science, data and observations. An international scientific review panel, headed

  • Two Engineering Measures to Reduce Global Warming: Injecting Particles into the Atmosphere and "Clean" Coal

    23/11/2008 Duração: 01h29min

    Managing Incoming Solar Radiation Largely out of concern that society may fall short of taking large and rapid enough measures to effectively contain the problem of global warming, two prominent atmospheric scientists - Paul Crutzen, who won a Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1995, and Tom Wigley, a senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research - published papers in 2006, suggesting that society might consider using geoengineering schemes to identify a temporarily "fix" to the problem. The concept of geoengineering - deliberately using technology to modify Earth's environment - has been discussed in the context of climate change since at least 1960. Over the years, proposals have included everything from carbon sequestration through ocean fertilization to damming the oceans. Crutzen and Wigley argued that geoengineering schemes, if done continuously, could reduce global warming enough to buy society time to address mitigation. However, geoengineering schemes may not be the answer. And in fact,

  • Impacts of Recent Climate Change: Current Responses and Future Projections for Wild Ecosystems

    13/10/2008 Duração: 01h18min

    Observed changes in natural systems, largely over the past century, indicate a clear global climate change signal. Even in the face of apparently dominating forces, such as direct, human-driven habitat destruction and alteration, this climate fingerprint implicates global climate change as a new and important driving force on wild plants and animals. Patterns across taxonomic groups are remarkably similar. Large poleward and upward range shifts associated with recent global climate change have been documented in a diversity of species. Likewise, significant trends towards earlier spring events have been documented in plants and animals across North America, Europe and Asia. These changes in species’ distributions and timing have been linked with regional climate warming for many species based on basic research and on long-term historical records. Our recent estimate is that about half of all wild species have responded to regional warming trends of 1-3° C over the past century, with strongest responses over

  • Accelerating Atmospheric CO2 Growth from Economic Activity, Carbon Intensity, and Efficiency of Natural Carbon Sinks

    28/09/2008 Duração: 01h53min

    The increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) is the single largest human perturbation of the climate system. Its rate of change reflects the balance between human-driven carbon emissions and the dynamics of a number of terrestrial and ocean processes that remove or emit CO2. It is the long term evolution of this balance that will determine to a large extent the speed and magnitude of climate change and the mitigation requirements to stabilize atmospheric CO2 concentrations at any given level. Dr. Canadell will present the most recent trends in global carbon sources and sinks, updated for the first time to the year 2007, with particularly focus on major shifts occurring since 2000. Dr. Canadell’s research indicates that the underlying drivers of changes in atmospheric CO2 growth include: i) increased human-induced carbon emissions, ii) stagnation of the carbon intensity of the global economy, and iii) decreased efficiency of natural carbon sinks. New Estimates of Carbon Storage in Arctic Soils and Implica

  • Keynote Address - AMS workshop on Federal Climate Policy

    19/09/2008 Duração: 38min

    Herman Daly, Ph.D., delivers the keynote address the recent AMS workshop on Federal Climate Policy. He explores the distinction between economic growth —a quantitative increase in size that is constrained by the physical limits of the Earth system—and economic development—a qualitative improvement in our state of being. In so doing, he helps identify design principles for climate policy that can enhance environmental protection, benefit the economy, and promote political feasibility. Daly is a professor in the School of Public Affairs at the University of Maryland. Previously he served as Senior Economist in the Environment Department at the World Bank, where he helped develop policy guidelines related to sustainable development. He has received numerous awards including the Honorary Right Livelihood Award, Sweden's alternative to the Nobel Prize.

  • Public Attitudes, Perceptions, and Concern about Global Warming: Evidence from a New Survey

    23/07/2008 Duração: 01h47min

    According to a February, 18, 2007, press release describing a survey on public perceptions of global warming, a majority of Americans agreed with most scientists that the Earth is getting warmer, but were divided over the seriousness of the problem, predicated on a belief that scientists themselves disagreed about global warming. What, if any, was the role of the news media in fueling that perception? Is that perception still prevalent? And where does the public stand today regarding amelioration strategies? Do people support the policy solutions that are most favored by the Presidential candidates? Is there a relation between what people know about global warming and how concerned they are about it? Is there a divide between Republicans and Democrats on these matters? If so, how might one explain these differences in perceptions about global warming? Program Summary With both major Presidential candidates endorsing cap and trade programs to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and Congress increasingly devoting

  • Coping with Climate Change: Gulf Coast Transportation and New York City Waterworks

    30/06/2008 Duração: 01h38min

    Gulf Coast Transportation: Coping with the Future Climate affects the design, construction, safety, operations, and maintenance of transportation infrastructure and systems. The prospect of a changing climate raises critical questions regarding how alterations in temperature, precipitation, storm events, and other aspects of the climate could affect the nation’s roads, airports, rail, transit systems, pipelines, ports, and waterways in the region of the U.S. central Gulf Coast between Galveston, Texas and Mobile, Alabama. This region contains multimodal transportation infrastructure that is critical to regional and national transportation services. More broadly, what happens in the Gulf region will no doubt, have ripple effects nationwide and internationally, as was evident in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina. New York City: Preparing for Climate Change New York City (NYC) represents one of the first substantial efforts to undertake climate-change planning for infrastructure changes in a large urban ar

  • AMS Summer Policy Colloquium - Media session (SPC)

    21/06/2008 Duração: 03h48min

    A primer on interacting with media workers and professional journalists.

  • Solar Radiation, Cosmic Rays and Greenhouse Gases: What's Driving Global Warming? (23 March 2008)

    29/05/2008 Duração: 01h44min

    Separating Solar and Anthropogenic (Greenhouse Gas-Related) Climate Impacts During the past three decades a suite of space-based instruments has monitored the Sun’s brightness as well as the Earth’s surface and atmospheric temperatures. These datasets enable the separation of climate’s responses to solar activity from other sources of climate variability (anthropogenic greenhouse gases, El Niño Southern Oscillation, volcanic aerosols). The empirical evidence indicates that the solar irradiance 11-year cycle increase of 0.1% produces a global surface temperature increase of about 0.1 K with larger increases at higher altitudes. Historical solar brightness changes are estimated by modeling the contemporary irradiance changes in terms of their solar magnetic sources (dark sunspots and bright faculae) in conjunction with simulated long-term evolution of solar magnetism. In this way, the solar irradiance increase since the seventeenth century Maunder Minimum is estimated to be slightly larger than the increase in

  • Climate & Health Effects of Carbon Dioxide, Black Carbon & other Air-borne Particles (16 May 2008)

    17/05/2008 Duração: 01h40min

    Contribution of Black Carbon and Atmospheric Brown Clouds to Climate Warming: Impacts and Opportunities Black carbon (BC) in soot is the dominant absorber of visible solar radiation in the atmosphere. Anthropogenic sources of black carbon, although distributed globally, are most concentrated in the tropics where solar irradiance is highest. Black carbon is often transported over long distances, mixing with other aerosols along the way. The aerosol mix can form transcontinental plumes of atmospheric brown clouds (ABCs), with vertical extents of 1.8 to 3.1 miles. Because of the combination of high absorption, a regional distribution roughly aligned with solar irradiance, and the capacity to form widespread atmospheric brown clouds in a mixture with other aerosols, emissions of black carbon are the second strongest contribution to current global warming, after carbon dioxide emissions. In the Himalayan region, solar heating from black carbon at high elevations may be just as important as carbon dioxide (CO2)

  • The Science of Communications: What We Know We Didn't Know but Convinced Ourselves Otherwise (23 Jan 2008)

    11/05/2008 Duração: 03h25min

    Joint Panel Discussion 8, The Science of Communications: What We Know We Didn't Know but Convinced Ourselves Otherwise (Joint between the Seventh Communications Workshop and the Third Symposium on Policy and Socio-Economic Research). Panelists: Chris Mooney, Seed Magazine, Washington, DC; Arthur Lupia, Univ. of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI; Baruch Fischhoff, Carnegie Mellon Univ., Pittsburgh, PA; Molly Bentley, BBC World News. Moderator: Anthony Socci, AMS Policy Program, Washington, DC.

  • Biofuels, Land Conversion & Climate Change (25 April 2008)

    29/04/2008 Duração: 02h03min

    Biofuels: Threats and Opportunities It is possible to make biofuels that reduce carbon emissions, but only if we ensure that they do not lead to additional land clearing. When land is cleared for agriculture, carbon that is locked up in the plants and soil is released through burning and decomposition. The carbon is released as carbon dioxide, which is an important greenhouse gas, and causes further global warming. Converting rainforests, peatlands, savannas, or grasslands to produce food crop–based biofuels in Brazil, Southeast Asia, and the United States creates a “biofuel carbon debt” by releasing 17 to 420 times more carbon dioxide than the annual greenhouse gas reductions that these biofuels would provide by displacing fossil fuels. Depending on future biofuel production, the effects of this clearing could be significant for climate change: globally, there is almost three times as much carbon locked up in the plants and soils of the Earth as there is in the air and 20% of global carbon dioxide emissio

  • Adapting to Climate Change (with Q & A): What Happens to Our Transportation Infrastructure? (7 April 2008)

    08/04/2008 Duração: 47min

    Adapting to Climate Change – Impacts on Our Transportation Infrastructure The U.S. transportation system was built for the typical weather and climate experienced locally. Moderate changes in the mean climate have little impact on transportation. However, changes in weather and climate extremes can have considerable impact on transportation. Transportation relevant measures of extremes have been changing over the past several decades and are projected to continue to change in the future. Some of the changes are likely to have a positive impact on transportation and some negative. As the climate warms, cold temperature extremes are projected to continue to decrease. Milder winter conditions would likely improve the safety record for rail, air and ships. Warm extremes, on the other hand, are projected to increase. This change would likely increase the number of roadbed and railroad track bucklings and adversely impact maintenance work. As the cold season decreases and the warm season increases, northern transp

  • Natural CO-2 Sinks and their Policy Implications: A Closer Look at Where Current CO-2 Levels are Headed, in Historical Context (14 Jan 2008)

    15/01/2008 Duração: 01h38min

    The Mauna Loa CO2 Record: From the Era of Discovery to the Era of Consequences 2008 marks the 50th anniversary of the Mauna Loa and South Pole CO2 records, which are the longest continuous time series of atmospheric CO2 levels. These records have played a critical role in advancing research on global warming by establishing the reality of increasing CO2 and providing a quantitative basis to assess the impact of human activities on atmospheric CO2. From 1958 to 2008, the CO2 levels at Mauna Loa increased from 315 to 385 part-per-million. The records establish that an amount of CO2 equivalent to 56% of the global emissions of fossil-fuel burning over this period has been retained in the air. The remaining 44% has therefore been absorbed by the oceans and land plants. Our ability to predict the impact of future emissions on the CO2 loading of the atmosphere and hence future climate hinges critically not only on future CO2 emissions, but also on the behavior of these land and ocean sinks. Over the past dec

  • The Frame and Scale of the Climate/Energy Challenge: Issues and Implications (18 Dec 2007)

    19/12/2007 Duração: 01h46min

    Does the current framing and scaling of the climate/energy issue adequately capture the challenge posed? If not, what might be a more appropriate frame and scale? The Union of Energy and Climate The issues of global energy demand and climate response are, at one level, complex and contentious. However, they are linked by simple but compelling considerations. First, we know that energy demand is driven by the product of population, per capita yearly income, and the amount of energy required for each dollar of economic production. The product of these three quantities sets the rate of current (2007) world energy consumption at approximately 0.5 billion trillion joules of energy each year. With the projected increase in population and average per capita income, this number will reach approximately 1.5 billion trillion joules each year by 2050. That increase is equivalent to the construction of 1000 large coal burning power plants per year for the next four decades. The scale, the size, of this increased de